Mentoring is a very old term and was first used in Greek mythology. Mentoring facilitate the transmission of knowledge, social capital and psychosocial support which is perceived by the recipient as relevant to his work career or professional development. Mentoring usually involves face to face conversation and communication for a sustained a period of time.

The person who acts as Mentor is perceived to have greater knowledge, wisdom or experience and the person who is considered to have less knowledge or experience is called the protégé.

Types of Mentoring
There are two types of mentoring relationship formal and informal. While the informal relationship developed on their own the formal mentoring relationship are often associated with the monitoring programs of an organization which are designed for the development of the employees.

While the informal mentoring relationships are unplanned and unstructured, the organization is also not involved in it. The results of these relationships are not easy to measure and no training or other standards for the selection of mentors and protégées are set. Still these mentoring relationships results in higher career satisfaction. On the other hand the formal mentoring relationships are planned and structured and organization is also involved in them. These are continuous monitor and results measured. Training is also given to all participants and mentors and mantes are selected through a set criterion. It results in higher job satisfaction.

Benefits of mentoring
Mentoring is beneficial for all the parties involved in it, the mentored the mantes and their organization. The mantes or the protégés get a chance to increase their knowledge and skills besides gaining greater in sight in to organization. They also received constructive feedback regularly which results in the growth of their confidence self esteem. It allows them a chance to access the opportunities that can contribute to their professional and personal development. It also increased their job satisfaction.

On the other hand the mentored gets higher personal and job satisfaction and a chance to show his leadership skills. The mentors also get an opportunity to share and use their own skill and experience. The challenges discussion with people who have a fresh perspective results in development of networks besides a change to reflect on existing skills and practices.

Counselling is a process through which one person helps another in an understanding atmosphere through purposeful conversation.

In the organizational context, counselling refers to the discussion of the employee’s problems that usually have an emotional content in it. Counselling tries to establish a helping relationship in which the employee can express his feelings openly which in turn helps him in coping with new experiences and looking at their problems more objectively. The result is that the employees become capable of facing their problems with lesser anxiety and tension.

Counselling is a process that helps the employees in learning ways about solving their inter-personal emotional and decision problems. The counsellor take care that employees do not become dependent on them and instead become independent problem solvers. The aim of counselling is to bring about a change in the habits of a person and make them more satisfied with themselves.

There are several methods of HR valuation and accounting and these are broadly divided into two categories: The monitory measures and non-monetary measures.

Monetary measures include
(a) Historical cost method
It suggests capitalizing the expenditure of the firm incurred on recruitment and selection, training and development of the employees and treats them as the assets of the organization for the purpose of HR accounting. This method suffers from a limitation that the capitalization of costs does not reflect its true value. The total performance has to be judged in relation with the total cost associated with the HR to reflect its value.

(b) Replacement cost method
The cost of replacement of individual and the re-building cost of organization is assessed to reflect the HR asset value of the individuals and the organization. However this method may not reflect either the actual cost or the contribution associated with HR

(c) Opportunity cost method
This model envisages the computation of monetary value and the allocation of people to the most promising activity and thereby assesses the opportunity cost of main employees through competitive bidding among the investment centre.

(d) Economic value method
The value of human resource is evaluated on the basis of contribution they are likely to make in the organization during their stay with the organization. The payments made to the employees in the form of salary, allowances and benefits are estimated and discounted appropriately to arrive at the present economic value of the individual.

(2) Non-monetary measures:
(a) Expected realizable value method
The elements of expected realizable value like the productivity, transferability and promote-ability are measure using personal research, appraisal techniques or other objective methods. The productivity is measured by objective indices and managerial assessment. The promote-ability and transferability are measured in terms of potential using psychometric tests and subjective evaluations.

(b) Discounted present value of future earnings
This method was use by Rencis Likert who proposed three sets of variables-casual, intermediate, output. These helped in measuring the effectiveness over a period of time. Casual variable include leadership style and behaviour, the intermediate variable are morale, motivation, commitment to goals etc. and these in turn affect the output variables like production, sales, profit etc.

HR valuation tells the potential investors about the human assets of a company. The investors can assess the returns from human assets which infect is the return they get from the people who are managing their investments. It also assures the customers the company that it has the requisite human capital reserves to service their demand. The employees of the company also feel assured when they come to know that they are counted as assets by the company and not expenses. HR valuation also serves as a tool for improved performance appraisal and man power assessment. It also helps the management in realizing the present value of its future commitment of providing employee compensation. It also helps the management in taking appropriate decision regarding the use of human assets. Managers get valuable feedback regarding the effectiveness of their HR policies and practices.

Human Resource Valuation
Human resource valuation means the identification and measurement of the value of human resources and then supplying this information to the interesting parties. It is sometimes also defined as a method of assigning value to the employees on the basis of their future economic services to the organization.. The employees of value at the present worth of the services they are expected to render during their stay in the organization or a particular period of time.

Human Resource Accounting
Human resource accounting deals with the investment made by an organization in its employees and the changes that occur in this value over a period of time. HRA is defined as a process of identifying and measuring data about human resources and communicating to the information to the interesting parties. The costs incurred by an organization in recruiting, selecting, hiring, training and developing the human assets are taken into account by HR accounting.